About

Dr Miriam La Rosa is a curator, researcher and writer with over ten years of experience working in the art field. Her PhD, which was awarded by the University of Melbourne in 2023, investigated notions of gift-exchange and host-guest relationships in the art residency. As part of this research trajectory, in 2019, she co-curated a cross-cultural exchange project through residencies, exhibitions and a public program of events between Sicily (Italy), Gippsland and Peppimenarti (Australia)—involving artists Giuseppe Lana, Steaphan Paton and Regina Pilawuk Wilson. In 2020, she hosted a digital exchange for the Marrgu Residency Program, an Indigenous-led initiative of Durrmu Arts.

In January 2024, Miriam was appointed as Curator at City of Greater Dandenong, to lead the visual arts exhibition program at Walker Street Gallery and the upcoming Dandenong New Art (DNA) Gallery.

Between 2020 and 2023, Miriam was Art Projects & Research Manager at Agency: an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-governed, non profit organisation that works as a catalyst to celebrate and promote Indigenous-led projects in the arts, cultural and environmental sector. In her role at Agency, Miriam managed the residency and publication programs and worked to expand and strengthen international partnerships.

In 2020 and 2022 Miriam tutored the subjects ‘Contemporary Art’ and ‘Biennials, Triennials and Documenta’ at the University of Melbourne. She is a Graduate Fellow at the Centre of Visual Arts (CoVA) and Treasurer of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) Australia. Miriam is also a co-founder of the Art Residency Research Collective (ARRC) with fellow researchers Pau Catà (Barcelona), Morag Iles (Newcastle upon Tyne), Patricia Healy Mcmeans (Minneapolis) and Angela Serino (Amsterdam).

In 2021 she was awarded First Prize in the AICA Incentive Prize for Young Art Critics for her essay A Guest on the Edge: Manifesta and the Quest for European Unity and Solidarity, selected by an international jury. Her work has been published in curatorial and academic journals including OnCurating, Spunti e Ricerche and OBOE Journal and in Melbourne’s weekly art criticism platform Memo Review.

Prior to moving to Australia, Miriam worked as Senior Researcher for the art consultancy agency Montabonel & Partners, London, engaging in the realisation of international symposia and publications such as the think tank Media in the Expanded Field (Fundación Casa Wabi, Mexico, July 2016) and the Report Art Institutions of the 21st Century (2016). Between 2015 and 2017, with her former curatorial collective, amaCollective, she was a member of Five Years—an artist-run, independent space, active in London since 1998. Miriam has contributed to projects in Education, Public Program and Exhibition departments of institutions including Whitechapel Gallery, London (for the 2015 exhibition Rivane Neuenschwander The Name of Fear), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (for the 2015 exhibition ZERO: Let Us Explore the Stars) and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (for the 2013 exhibitions Sheela Gowda: Open Eye Policy and Piero Gilardi—Samen Werken).

She is a co-founder of the online publishing platform Curating the Contemporary (CtC) that she manages since 2013. In 2015, she was awarded the first NSS/CASS FINE ART Award for ‘Curatorial Project’ for LIMITACTION, a six-month residency program that she launched in the Window Space, London. The project resulted in the publication IN TRANSITION: the artistic and curatorial residency, presented in the context of a roundtable discussion she convened at Whitechapel Gallery, during The London Open 2015 Public Program. Miriam holds an MA in Curating the Contemporary from London Metropolitan University, a Master of Museology from Reinwardt Academy, Amsterdam, and a BA (Hons) in Art History from Università Cattolica, Brescia.

I would like to acknowledge and honour the Traditional Custodians of the land where I live and work today, and pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded.